It’s indisputable: against all outside expectations, Jaylen Brown is playing the peak basketball of his career.
But with the calendar about to flip to March, does he have a real shot at staying in the mix for league MVP?
It looks like a two-man race for the award – for now. ESPN’s second 2025-26 MVP straw poll, (a panel of 100 media members), has Oklahoma City’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Denver’s Nikola Jokic in the top spots. NBA.com’s most recent KIA MVP ladder has the same players, in the exact same order.
Both lists have Brown in the sixth spot. In ESPN’s poll, he didn’t earn a single first or second-place vote.
Brown’s averaging 29 points, 7 rebounds, and 5 assists per game. He’s fourth in points, but gets his lunch eaten, (statistically speaking), in the other major categories by other MVP contenders like Jokic, Detroit’s Cade Cunningham, (9.8 assists per game), and San Antonio’s Victor Wembanyama, (11.2 rebounds per game).
Here’s where it gets spicy. Since the 2023-24 season, players have to appear in at least 65 regular season games to qualify for MVP, and two of the top contenders are at a real risk of missing that mark. A bone bruise kept Jokic out of several weeks’ worth of play. If he missed just two more games, he’s out of the running completely.
That’s a big dog to knock out of the fight.
Wembanyama missed a dozen games in November with a calf strain, and then suffered a minor knee injury to start this calendar year. He only has a margin of four games to miss to stay eligible in the award race.
Both Denver and San Antonio have serious championship aspirations and they’re in a stacked Western Conference. When considering Wembanyama’s unique build and blood clot scare from his rookie season, as well as Jokic’s complete irreplaceability with the Nuggets, it’s very possible that both clubs err on the side of caution with their superstars and prioritize rest and health over the individual accolades.
As noted by Tim Bontemps in a dissection of ESPN’s poll, Laker Luka Doncic, Clipper Kawhi Leonard, and Timberwolf Anthony Edwards have all missed a double-digit amount of games.
So, back to Brown. He now finds himself handcuffed by the same issue that has plagued his teammate, Jayson Tatum, in these awards races: the NBA does not prioritize availability, consistency, nor usage above per-game points, rebounds, and assists.
Sure, the league took a step forward with the 65-game minimum. And yet, not a single MVP candidate appears in the league’s top 20 in terms of total minutes, and Brown leads the pack at 28th, with 1490 minutes over 51 games. Brown’s usage, (the exact formula for this advanced stat is field goal attempts + possessions ending free throw attempts + turnovers/possessions), is also 36%, second among all NBA players and just a notch below that of Luka Doncic, which is insane when one considers how the two players are typically compared. Just for good measure, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s usage rate is 32.2%, and Jokic’s is sub-30%.
A league that’s focused on minimizing both tanking and player load management would do well to further incentivize the Celtics’ approach to putting their best player in a spot where he’s a marathon man, not the final leg of the fastest relay.
Brown has touted himself as the best two-way player in the game. Defense has always been a point of pride for him. What’s tough for him in this landscape of players is that Wembanyama is a complete unicorn on the glass, and Jokic has 21 triple-doubles this season.
But remember, both guys could very well be out of the running this spring.
The uncertainty of the end of this season keeps the door open for Brown to finish in the top-5 spots for MVP, and certainly makes it realistic that he garners first-team All-NBA honors, for the first time in his career, as the 65-game threshold exists there, as well.